MATTHEW 28:16-20
Last week our dive into 1 Corinthians was a kind of a turning point. I thought it was important to talk a little bit about the theology of resurrection, but I also wanted to make a clean break between two very different sets of resurrection appearances of Jesus. Up to last week the resurrection appearances that we looked at tended to focus on Jesus overcoming the doubts of his disciples; on Jesus essentially “proving” himself. They focused on what you might call Jesus’ substance – they were making the point that Jesus (even the resurrected Jesus) had a real body; that he was truly alive once again in some kind of physical, material sense. So there were all sorts of references to Jesus doing things that only someone with a body could do – inviting people to touch him, eating with people – things like that. And given that focus I thought the jump into 1 Corinthians was a good one, because it forces disciples of Jesus to confront that physical aspect of resurrection. But the last three appearances of Jesus that we’re going to look at starting this week have a bit of a different focus. The later appearances of the resurrected Jesus focus not so much on Jesus himself, but on the disciples instead and on the church as a whole. So, the resurrection has happened – that’s great news, but so what? That seems to be the shift as the 40 days aftere the resurrection move on, which makes sense. Jesus needs to make sure that his disciples know what to do with everything they’ve seen, heard and experienced over their time with him. This passage is usually called the “Great Commission” of the church; it’s the church’s first mission statement; the first statement of what the church is expected to do; of what its role and purpose is.
Before getting into the specifics of today’s reading, though, I want to mention a little bit about the structure of Matthew’s Gospel. Whoever wrote this was a superb author. He knew how to write and he knew that he shouldn’t leave loose ends hanging. He knows how to put together what we call a pericope, for example. A pericope is a story with a definite arc; a logical pattern. This story is the end of an arc. It starts with Jesus being dead and buried; then there’s a guard posted at the tomb; then Jesus is resurrected. So the resurrection is the hub around which the arc revolves. Then the guard that was posted at the tomb makes a report; after which Jesus who was dead and buried is suddenly alive and well. So you have what you might call a 1-2-3-2-1 move in this part of the story. There are also two points to today’s passage that take us back to earlier parts of the Gospel. In Matthew’s Christmas story at the beginning of the Gospel, Jesus is called “Emmanuel” – “God With Us.” Now at the end of the Gospel that circle is closed and Jesus tells his disciples “I am with you always.” Also, in this story Jesus says that “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” This takes the reader back to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry – in particular to the story of Jesus being tempted by Satan in the wilderness in Chapter 4. In that story, Satan offers Jesus authority – remember that he shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and says in effect “all this can be yours if you worship me.” Now, at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, it’s Jesus who is being worshiped and he has all authority – he didn’t need to bow down to Satan to claim authority. It’s a really well crafted story that the author tells, making sure that we make these connections with what he’s said before.
And now I want to talk a little bit about the location and timing of this incident. We know from the text that this incident happened in Galilee, but we can’t be absolutely sure what the reference to “the mountain where Jesus had told them to go” is. In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus hadn’t instructed the disciples to go to a mountain; he had just generally instructed them “to go to Galilee” in verse 10. Galilee is a region that borders the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus’ final resurrection appearance in John’s Gospel took place. If one tries to reconcile all the different resurrection appearances from all the Gospels and arrange them chronologically, it seems that the giving of the Great Commission would have come after John’s account of the meeting at the Sea of Galilee. It’s also possible that these 5 verses we’re looking at are actually recording two separate resurrection appearances: one in verses 16 & 17 and one in verses 18-20. Verse 18 starts with “Then Jesus came to them …” It’s not entirely clear whether the disciples saw Jesus and then he came to them immediately, or if the disciples saw Jesus and then at some later time he came to them. So there could be two appearances here. As for the location, Galilee is on the west side of the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River. In modern terms, to the south it goes basically as far as the northern boundary of the Palestinian Authority, just south of Nazareth and to the north it extends basically to Lebanon. There are two mountains of significance in Galilee: Mount Tabor, which is about 1900 feet tall, and Mount Meron, which is about 4000 feet tall. Mount Meron is taller, but it had no particular religious significance in Jesus’ day. Mount Tabor, although not named in Acts, has traditionally been believed to be the place where Jesus ascended to heaven, and it’s fairly close to Nazareth, where Jesus is said to have grown up, so given its significance to both Jesus’ earlier life and his ascension, one could assume that the reference here is to Mount Tabor, which is in the Lower (southern) Galilee, and which borders the Jezreel Valley. The Jezreel Valley has some significance in the Old Testament. It was there that Israel defeated the Midianites, Amelekites and the Children of the East (in Judges 6) and it was also where Israel (under the leadership of King Saul) was defeated by the Philistines (in 1 Samuel 29). 2 Kings 9 tells us that it’s also where Jezebel was killed. So this region is of some biblical significance. By contrast, the area around Mount Meron is in the Upper (northern) Galilee close to Lebanon, and it isn’t of any particular biblical significance. Mount Tabor is also a lot closer to Jerusalem than Mount Meron, so the mountain reference in verse 16 is probably to Mount Tabor.
The disciples’ response to Jesus’ appearance here is mixed. We’re told that some worshiped him and that some doubted. It isn’t really made clear what the doubt was over. Was the text saying that the disciples still couldn’t believe he was really there after what by now had been multiple encounters, or is it suggesting that there was doubt about whether Jesus should be worshiped? I did suggest a moment ago that this part of the story is probably a deliberate reference back to the story of the temptation, when Satan demanded worship – so it’s pointing out the contrast between Jesus and Satan. Satan never received worship, but Jesus does receive worship. And there are other references to Jesus being worshiped. Just a few verses before (in Matthew’s account of resurrection day) the women who found the empty tomb were said to have encountered him and worshiped him. In Matthew 14 it’s recorded that the disciples worshiped him in a boat on the Sea of Galilee after he quieted a storm. So there is precedent for Jesus being worshiped. Nothing much is made of the reference, and it’s possible that Matthew means that the same people experienced both responses – that all of them had a strange combination of awe and worship that was mixed with fear and doubt, which wouldn’t really be unusual in the circumstances. It’s interesting that throughout his Gospel Matthew mentions Jesus being worshiped 3 times – more than any other Gospel writer mentions (Luke and John include 1 reference each, and Mark has none.) We don’t really know what form the worship of Jesus took here (or in any of the other accounts of Jesus being worshiped) but simply the image of Jesus being worshiped is an important one because worship belongs to God, of course, and to worship anyone or anything other than God is idolatry. Jesus never demands worship, but Jesus never chastises his disciples on those occasions when they worship him, so he apparently didn’t consider this an idolatrous act. Whenever you hear anyone say that Jesus never claimed to be God that’s true but it has to be balanced by the fact that Jesus accepted worship. The exact relationship of Jesus to God is still being worked out by the church at the time the gospels were written and it would continue to be a matter of debate for a few centuries afterward. (And, to some extent, it’s still debated in the Christian community today, although traditional Christianity would recognize Jesus as divine.) In a similar way, the Great Commission of the church contains the earliest formulation of what we call the trinitarian formula – the command to baptize “in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” That continues to be the only accepted ecumenical formula we’re allowed to use for baptism.
Baptism as a normative part of Christian faith comes from this passage. Jesus commands the church to baptize. He doesn’t mention water, though. That could be because the use of water was a given, but there have been those who have suggested that water baptism is not what the New Testament generally refers to. The testimony of John the Baptist was that water baptism was his baptism and not Jesus’ baptism; that Jesus would baptize not with water but with the Holy Spirit and with fire. William Booth (who founded the Salvation Army) didn’t believe water baptism was necessary and believed that the references to baptism in the New Testament generally referred to baptism with the Holy Spirit. He didn’t forbid water baptism; he just declared it unnecessary. So in 1869 Booth wrote that “I commend one qualification which seems to involve all others. That is, the … baptism of the Holy Ghost. I would have you settle it in your souls for ever this one great immutable principle in the economy of grace, that spiritual work can only be done by those who possess spiritual power. No matter what else you may lack, or what may be against you, with the Holy Ghost you will succeed; but without the Holy Spirit, no matter what else you may possess, you will utterly and eternally fail.” For Booth (and some others) “the baptism of the Holy Ghost” is the only thing necessary to be a Christian disciple and it's essentially the equivalent of coming to faith. Faith empowers us to be and to act as the disciples of Jesus. The issue is confused by the way this text is worded and by the order in which things are mentioned. Jesus’ followers are told to baptize and are then told to teach. So, are people to be baptized and then brought to faith through teaching (which would provide a basis for infant baptism), or are people being brought to faith (ie, baptized with the Spirit) and then taught more about the faith (which justifies believers’ baptism – that you must believe before being baptized)? The place and nature of baptism in the church is not as simple an issue from either a biblical or historical perspective as we often make it out to be.
There’s also the problem of verse 19, in which the disciples are told to “make disciples of all nations.” First, I’d say this is an important move for Matthew, even if it only takes place in the second last verse of the Gospel. Remember that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Matthew’s Gospel was very much oriented toward Jewish Christianity, and that there’s little emphasis or thought about a possible Gentile mission for the church. Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. That’s been Matthew’s point for almost the entire Gospel – until we read the words “Go and make disciples of all nations.” Suddenly the church’s mission explodes outwards. Mark’s Gospel – which also seems to have been primarily directed toward Jewish Christianity – makes the same move in its later ending when Mark says “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.” Mark is almost universally believed to have been written before Matthew and to have been a source for Matthew, but I suspect that the ending of Mark’s Gospel (16:9-20) was actually added after Matthew’s Gospel was written and was in response to Matthew’s Gospel mentioning the sending of the disciples to all nations.
The Greek word translated “nations” is actually “ethnos.” It can mean a variety of things: nation, race, ethnicity – almost any identifiable group of people. To Jewish people, ethnos is usually a way of referring to the Gentiles – so in the Jewish view of the world there were the Jews and there were the “peoples” (the ethnos; everyone else.) There’s no doubt that this is a very obvious and sudden universalization of a Gospel that for almost its entire length seems directed mostly to Jews. In that sense it brings Matthew into line with the rapid movement of the Christian faith into the Gentile world. It’s possible that these last few verses were added later after the rest of the Gospel had been written to account for that move. Many biblical scholars believe that at the very least the trinitarian formula of verse 19 was a later addition reflecting the development of the trinitarian doctrine. I think you could make the argument that the whole passage was added. In any event, one of the problems with the use of the word “nations” to translate “ethnos” would arise once the Christian church had gained power and especially once the Roman Empire had adopted Christianity. The Gentile world tended to understand “nations” as political entities – nation-states, and beginning with the Roman Empire through at least to the Middle Ages whether a “nation” was Christian or not depended to some extent on whether it had been conquered. If a Christian nation conquered a non-Christian nation, what usually happened was that the king of the non-Christian nation would be baptized (with water) and then would often require his subjects to be baptized (again – with water.) In essence, this become forced baptism, with any accompanying professions of faith usually being made at the point of a sword, so to speak. Christianity became in many ways a cultural identification rather than a spiritual transformation. I’d argue that while we no longer practice forced conversion, the problem of Christianity being cultural rather than spiritual is still very much with us today.
As I’ve said, properly understanding the Bible means understanding both its history and context and how it’s relevant to today’s context. I think that there are a lot of connecting points between today’s church and the Great Commission of the church in Matthew 28: debates about the nature of Jesus, debates about the place and nature of baptism, the problem of cultural Christianity. All these are found in this passage and are still with us today.
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